City council scamps aren’t the worst thing
Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti mixes selective facts with exaggerations and scaremongering, writes Royson James.
Marie Labatte. Joan King. Mike Feldman. James Pasternak. Those have been my city councillors over half a century of living in Toronto. Not a crackerjack among them. Like most councillors: steady, average, doing not much to get noticed, accomplishing just enough to not be forgotten.
It’s almost as if most city councillors just want to get by.
We are better as a city for the ones who extend themselves — even if they are likely the ones to annoy us with their antics.
As a columnist covering the newly formed amalgamated city of Toronto on Jan. 1, 1998 I had the pick of the litter in Brian Ashton, Olivia Chow, Betty Disero, Doug Holyday, Tom Jakobek, Anne Johnston, Jack Layton, David Miller, Howard Moscoe, Kyle Rae and Michael Walker. No shrinking violets there — though, at least one scoundrel. Buildings and parks and streets are named after these legendary politicians. A youngster named Mammoliti was also elected on that megacity council, but there was enough drama to distract us from this chameleon who manages to slither from one political party and ally to the other, without missing a press conference.
George, now Giorgio, is one of those rare politicians — he uses legitimate political tactics to ill-considered ends, mixing selective facts with exaggerations, half-truths, scaremongering and deception. As such he is among the more dangerous of the kind of politicians we can send to city hall.
The late Rob Ford was cut from a similar cloth, simultaneously better and worse than Mammoliti. A little goofy with a dose of the common man, Ford attracted sympathy where the slick Giorgio engenders contempt. I couldn’t vote for either — unless forced to pick one of the two. And then, “Father, forgive me,” I would have had to choose the lying, overmatched, out of his depth, drug-induced Ford over Mammoliti.
Municipal governments are robust enough to withstand the Giorgio Mammolitis on council. Our city councils can survive a Ford as mayor, thanks to the checks and balances and independence of councillors who don’t have to hide behind party solidarity in order to excuse bad behaviour from their leaders. As such, Ford was mayor in name only by the end.
It might even be better to sprinkle council with one or two of these scamps rather than populate it with a monolithic, homogeneous group of self-serving yes-men and -women.
Dissent, however impure and bastardized is still dissent; and opposition is useful in a democracy. We’d prefer dissent to be principled and thoughtful and artfully practiced. But I’d rather have one bad city councillor than a bunch of indifferent ones. Several bad ones? I hope it never comes to that.
Because of its size (47 councillors, after the next election), breadth of responsibility (roads, waste, transit, water, police, fire, housing, social services), and lack of political constraints such as political parties to curb independent thought or action, the job of Toronto city councillor attracts everyone from a Rhodes Scholar to a donkey.
But the system accommodates them all; it suffers fools gladly.
Consider that Torontonians have elected Raymond Cho, Michelle Holland, Peter LiPreti, Suzan Hall, Norm Gardner, Frank DiGiorgio and Ron Moeser, Peter Milczyn to the same political body as the luminaries above.
These lesser lights could not be more different in personality, style, substance and political acumen. Yet constituents kept sending them to city hall, repeatedly, just in case you thought the voters were mistaken.
So I suppose Mammoliti will continue to get elected. There he was again a week or so ago, erecting signs along Finch Ave. W. where the LRT is supposed to be constructed, evoking the spectre of commuter chaos, and invoking the magic word: subway. It’s the cruelest hoax possible. Unsuspecting constituents might believe that a subway can possibly be built in a corridor that doesn’t have enough riders to justify an LRT today. And so they are encouraged to kill the only option that will bring them better transit in their working lifetime.
Before a subway comes to Finch West, several other rapid transit lines will be built — none of which, by the way, will be going to Markham and Pickering and beyond. Madness, it seems, knows no bounds when spelled S-U-BW-A-Y. Mammoliti’s opposition to the LRT might be helpful if other members of city council do their due diligence, examine the case for transit along the corridor, test the facts against a cost-benefit analysis and choose the right technology for this corridor. Yes, that might be a first. But it might just lead us to a BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) — a cheaper, more flexible, efficient and doable solution that can be delivered in five years, not 50, and doesn’t aggravate driving conditions in this trucking alley.
Mammoliti’s dissent, in the hands of the collective wisdom of city council, might just lead to a better solution than the groupthink coming from politicized party decisions.
Another argument for electing a maverick or two on city council